Charles Krauthammer: Obama’s phony war means going through the motions, not success

Tell me: What’s a suicide bomber doing with a passport? He’s not going anywhere. And, though I’m not a religious scholar, I doubt that a passport is required in paradise for a martyr to access his 72 black-eyed virgins.

A Syrian passport was found near the body of one of the terrorists. Why was it there? Undoubtedly, to back up the Islamic State boast that it is infiltrating operatives amid the refugees flooding Europe.

The passport may have been fake, but the terrorist’s fingerprints were not. They match those of a man who just a month earlier had come through Greece on his way to kill Frenchmen in Paris.

If the other goal of the Paris massacre was to frighten France out of the air campaign in Syria – the way Spain withdrew from the Iraq war after the terror attack on its trains in 2004 – they picked the wrong country. France is a serious post-colonial power, as demonstrated in Ivory Coast, the Central African Republic and Mali, which France saved from an Islamist takeover in 2013.

Indeed, socialist President Francois Hollande has responded furiously to his country’s 9/11 with an intensified air campaign, hundreds of raids on suspected domestic terrorists, a state of emergency and proposed changes in the constitution to make France less hospitable to jihad.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama, titular head of the Free World, has responded to Paris with weariness and annoyance. His news conference in Turkey was marked by a stunning tone of passivity, detachment and lassitude, compounded by impatience and irritability at the suggestion that his Syria strategy might be failing.

The only time he showed any passion was in denouncing Republicans for hardheartedness toward Muslim refugees. One hundred and twenty-nine innocents lie dead, but it takes the Republican Party to kindle Obama’s ire.

The rest was mere petulance, dismissing criticisms of his Syria policy as popping off. Inconveniently for Obama, one of those critics is Dianne Feinstein, the leading Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

She directly contradicted Obama’s blithe assertion, offered the day before the Paris attack, that the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) was contained and not gaining strength. “I have never been more concerned,” Feinstein said. “ISIL is not contained. ISIL is expanding.”

Obama defended his policy by listing its multifaceted elements. Such as: “I hosted at the United Nations an entire discussion of counterterrorism strategies and curbing the flow of foreign fighters.” An “entire” discussion, mind you. Not a partial one. They tremble in Raqqa.

And: “We have mobilized 65 countries to go after ISIL.” Yes, and what would we do without Luxembourg?

Obama complained of being criticized for not being bellicose enough. But the complaint is not about an absence of bellicosity but about an absence of passion, of urgency and of commitment to the fight.

The air campaign over Syria averages seven strikes a day. Seven. In Operation Desert Storm, we flew 1,100 sorties a day. Even in the Kosovo campaign, we averaged 138. Obama is doing just enough in Syria to give the appearance of motion, yet not nearly enough to have any chance of success.

His priorities lie elsewhere. For example, closing Guantanamo. Obama actually released five detainees on the day after the Paris massacre. He is passionate about Guantanamo. It’s a great terrorist recruiting tool, he repeatedly explains.

Obama still seems to believe that – even as the Islamic State has produced an astonishing wave of terrorist recruitment with a campaign of brutality, butchery and enslavement filmed in living color. Who can still believe that young Muslims are leaving Europe to join the Islamic State because of Guantanamo?

Obama’s other passion is protecting Islam from any possible association with “violent extremism.” The Islamic State is nothing but “killers with fantasies of glory.” Obama can never bring himself to acknowledge why these people kill and willingly die: to advance a radical Islamist millenarianism that is purposeful, indeed eschatological – and appealing enough to have created the largest, most dangerous terrorist movement on earth.

Hollande is trying to gather a real coalition to destroy the Islamic State, even as Obama touts his phony 65. For 11 post-World War II presidencies, coalition leading has been the role of the United States. Where is America today? Awaiting a president. The next president.

Charles Krauthammer is a columnist for The Washington Post. He can be contacted at:

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Gene Masseth

We should all take a trip back to 2002-03 and have a look at all the nice things Krauthammer had to say about the French when they tried to warn us about turning over the apple cart by going into Iraq.

Rich Alley

Obama is a very strange “leader”. His next year in office will be spent exactly like this: in a delusional manner. There is something wrong with this man’s mind and qualities.

sequoiaqueneaux

By every standard, things have improved dramatically since Obama took office, including the undeniable drop of terrorist attacks against the US and our interests worldwide, and the number of wanted terrorists killed.

Just how ANGRY does the longest period of consecutive job growth in US history that Obama has led make you? Wasn’t Obamacare supposed to create massive unemployment? Whooooooooooooooops!

Cecil Gray

Charles crackhead and his continual drivel based in trickle down thievery and nurtured profit war insanity never fails to cynically disembowel his pernicious rhetoric.

bootjack

Obama’s idea of fighting terrorism is welcoming terrorists to the U.S..

KraziJoe

Tell that to Bin Laden.

TS13

And you have evidence of this…..

sequoiaqueneaux

Yet terrorist attacks against the US and our interests worldwide are way down under Obama. This is just a fact.

And how stupid are you to be tricked into thinking refugees are terrorists? All the attackers in Paris were European citizens, FYI. Drop your irrational, bed-wetting fear you coward.

justanotherfakename

The author makes a couple valid points, but only tells part of the story. Yes, one of the terrorists was found with a passport, a fake one, and neither he, nor any of the other terrorists was a refugee; he either slipped through their porous open border, by now hopefully former porous open border, or was there legally and had been radicalized through the non stop propaganda of extreme Islamic proselytizing. I for one am sick of the politicizing of terrorism, by the left and the right, it’s disgusting. The French have announced they are still allowing refugees in, through a tightened process, so the right should stop saying they are the ones standing with the French when so many of them say no to refugees, and the open border crowd on the left should wake up.

PortlandGenXer

More fear mongering and posturing from the right. A measured response is exactly the right thing to do.

Seems that conservatives have forgotten how the world works. They want their way and they want it now, regardless of the costs.

jbacus

Our response should be measured in megatons.

sequoiaqueneaux

Mass murder is the answer. How’d that work out in Iraq? Oh yeah. It created this whole situation. No thanks.

sequoiaqueneaux

This guy is so dumb. There have been FAR FAR fewer attacks against Americans and our interests since Obama took office. This is an undeniable fact.

And of course he fails to mention the entire situation is a result of GW Bush’s invasion of Iraq that he cheerled. Obama wisely opposed it.

Rich Alley

Obama and Hillary. One is thankful he is a lame duck, the other is thankful people treat her as a lame duck.

oldsodman

What do you expect when the “white guilt” crowd elects a “neighborhood activist” from Chicago to be their Commander in Chief. The image of Obama saluting a Marine while holding a cup of coffee is etched on my brain. A sad joke.